Examine

Oxenbridge and Brown (2002: 264) suggest how to examine the current and future prospect of partnership. The first step is exploring the partnership background: motives of entering relationship and actors involved. Second, the views of unions and management on benefits and drawbacks are assessed. Third, it explores the content of arrangements: union recognition, participation structure, and relations between union officials and management. They argue that there are two faces of partnership: “nurturing of Collective bargaining (CB)” when unions have a strong bargaining power in informal partnership as they were supported with membership solidarity, and “containment of CB” as unions involve in written arrangements with strong management influences.

Marchington (1992: 136-142; 1994: 672-682) reveals similar results while explaining the role of partnership in preserving the CB. Partnership through Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) is an alternative or competing mechanism when employers develop it to oppose CB. JCC is marginal to CB if it has minimum impact due to its lack of authority in making decisions and the triviality of subject matters. However, JCC may act as an adjunct to CB, where they may have different roles but achieving mutual cooperation